IBD Editorials

NRA Chief's School Security Ideas Worth Consideration

12/24/2012 06:36 PM ET

Second Amendment: When big-government politicians and their media allies team up to incite hysteria, any voice of reason is attacked as if it were crazed and evil. The latest victim heads the National Rifle Association.

Tabloid "journalism" is no stranger to the gutter, or to serving the interests of the ever-expanding state. In 1975, for instance, the New York Daily News ran its infamous "Ford to City: Drop Dead" front-page headline, which ultimately led to President Ford caving in and bailing out the wasteful, corrupt New York City government.

The tabloid's agitation against Ford also helped him lose, just barely, New York's then-41 electoral votes the next year — votes he could have used to beat Jimmy Carter.

Just after the Dec. 14 Newtown, Conn., massacre, the Daily News continued this politicized, low-road tradition with a front-page headline declaring "Blood On Your Hands," accompanied by a depiction of the U.S. Capitol drenched in red.

Then, managing to sink even lower, the News on Saturday ran the headline "Craziest Man on Earth" with an unflattering photo of National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre and the NRA logo. It said, "vile NRA nut blames everyone and everything except the guns."

Even the Big Apple's right-leaning Murdoch-owned tabloid, the New York Post, joined in, proclaiming LaPierre a "Gun Nut!"

But LaPierre's remarks were a lot more sober than most of the statements coming from commentators and politicians, who just hours after 20 kids were slaughtered in Newtown were falling all over themselves to gain ideological advantage.

The NRA chief asked the most sensible question anyone has asked:

"How do we protect our children right now, starting today, in a way that we know works?"

LaPierre couldn't be more right when he points out that "Politicians pass laws for gun-free school zones. They issue press releases bragging about them. They post signs advertising them. And in so doing, they tell every insane killer in America that schools are their safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk."

He pointed out that banks, airports, office buildings, power plants, courthouses, stadiums, the president, and members of Congress are all protected by armed security.

"Yet when it comes to the most beloved, innocent and vulnerable members of the American family — our children — we as a society leave them utterly defenseless, and the monsters and predators of this world know it and exploit it."

In the meantime, federal gun prosecutions are down 40% to the lowest levels in a decade, as LaPierre points out. Hollywood and the video game industry have seen to it that "a child growing up in America witnesses 16,000 murders and 200,000 acts of violence by the time he or she reaches the ripe old age of 18."

But for speaking such truths, and for demanding that America's schools be protected by "qualified, armed security," LaPierre and the NRA get the Saul Alinsky treatment.

"Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it," Chicago's father of community organizing and hero for Barack Obama advised in the 12th of his "Rules for Radicals."

"Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy," Alinsky wrote. "Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)"

Disarming Americans is no plan to protect schoolchildren. America is a nation of innovators who can come up with security solutions for schools along lines pretty similar to what LaPierre envisions. His ideas should be read carefully and debated calmly, not ridiculed.